


A Lovers' Farewell III: Love Remembers

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Series: A Lover's Farewell by Blue Champagne [3]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M, Other: See Story Notes, Series: Lovers Farewell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time to take the bull by the horns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lovers' Farewell III: Love Remembers

**Author's Note:**

> There's a warning at the end--scroll down to see it if you havne't read the other stories in the series and don't mind being spoiled. No noncon or rough stuff.

## A Lovers' Farewell III: Love Remembers

by Blue Champagne

Author's webpage: <http://members.aa.net/~bluecham/>

* * *

A LOVERS' FAREWELL III: LOVE REMEMBERS 

"Chief." 

"Yeah," Blair answered brightly from the kitchen, not taking his eyes off the disk of pizza dough he was presently spinning and tossing like a pro. 

"I'm gonna do it." 

"Gonna do what, big guy?" Another toss. 

"Talk to Stephen." 

"You do that pretty regularly. If we're talking about the usual Stephen, I mean, the one with the same last name as you. Why's it suddenly enough to have to start staring into space and letting your beer go as flat as, well, flat beer?" Blair still hadn't taken his eyes off his dough. Jim was pretty much used to his guide's sixth sense by now, at least when it came to Jim himself. 

"I mean I'm gonna TALK to STEPHEN." 

"Family stuff? Your dad?" 

"Not quite." Jim's mouth quirked in a sardonic expression, his eyes still focused _at_ the patio door rather than out of it. "Family stuff, you could call it that. Not Dad. By a long shot." 

"Your mom?" 

"Sandburg, damn it! You know what I mean!" Jim set his warm dead beer down on a coaster and slumped in his seat on the longer couch. 

Blair, maddeningly, was still spinning dough. "Yeah, Jim, I do. I mean, you brought up your thing with him when you were younger again just last night. But if you can't say it to me, how the hell do you expect to be able to talk about it with him?" 

"How the hell can _you_ be so casual about it?" 

"We _talked_ about that, Jim, I'm an _anthropologist_ , Jim," Blair singsonged with an air of boredom at the repetition. "It is just _not that weird_ , you know?" 

"I'll never believe that." 

"Believe it. Even in modern western society, it's a lot more common than most people would like to think, and I'm not talking about abuse here, about someone who goes along because they're too afraid to fight it or report it. I'm talking about loving, consensual--" 

"I _know_ what you're talking about." 

"Great, you can't even listen to _me_ say it. Maybe you should rethink bringing it up to Stephen until you've got a little more of a handle on it, Jim." 

"It's been twenty freaking years. How much more of a handle am I going to get?" 

"But it's been exactly _one_ year since you started speaking again, and you're both different people than the kids who had to say a heartrending goodbye twenty years ago. One year during which, if you told me correctly, neither of you has once broached the subject, but _both_ of you have met each other's eyes at key points and _knew_ you were both thinking about it--and took off along any of a number of escape routes, usually pulling out some form of 'How about them Jags, eh?' That does not sound like a person ready to seize the bull by the horns, if you'll pardon the expression." 

"I don't think I'll pardon the expression." 

"Are you still in love with him?" 

"What the HELL is that supposed to mean?" 

"Which words didn't you understand?" 

"I'm in love with YOU, you fucking prick." 

Blair smiled a little. "Which, my beloved sack of shit, does not necessarily preclude your being in love with him, too. After all, you were deep in the passionate throes when you ended the relationship; you didn't go through the stages of breakup or anything. It's like, I loved Roy, and that didn't stop just because he decided his career was more important than our relationship, and it didn't stop when he was killed, either. I know you've said you love Stephen, but you were talking about strictly fraternal feelings, kind of like when you announced to Simon and me that you loved us that one time. But you _loved_ Stephen like all _holy_ hell; like you do me, now. I've seen your face when you talk about the two of you as kids." The dough was nearly a perfect pizza-pan-shaped disk by this time. 

"You think I'm still in love with him--and that doesn't _bother_ you?" 

"No. But if you're gonna start making love with him again I wanna see some bloodwork results on him first. Hah!" Blair raised both floury hands in triumph as the dough spun to a perfect, flour-puff-raising landing in the pan. "And the judges are unanimous--" 

"God damn it, will you take this seriously for a minute?" 

"Jim." Blair dropped his triumphant pose, and ran a hand through his hair, leaving a broad powdery streak through it. "I want you to know I'm not making light of your feelings for Stephen, or your feelings about finally dealing with the relationship the two of you had as...well, not kids, exactly. Young men. You've told me all the details about how the two of you banded together to pull the wool over your Dad's eyes with the whole competitiveness thing he tried to force on you, and eventually wound up with a devotion to each other so profound it turned into romantic love. I just wish _you_ could stop taking it so seriously--I don't mean that like it sounds." 

"I sure as hell hope you don't." 

"I mean I wish you could see it for what it was--a _good_ thing, Jim. A supportive, loving thing. Not a workable, thing, no, I'm not saying that--it wasn't a thing you dared let go on, not with Stephen still a minor--" 

"I was a minor too, at first." 

"Yeah, but after you turned eighteen, there could have been some seriously nasty shit go down if it got out what you two were doing--hell, Stephen could have been taken into protective custody by the court, and _you_ could have been arrested. Even if it had got out while you were still seventeen, you'd both have been removed from your home, probably had your dad declared an unfit parent, and you and Stephen would have been separated, at the very least. And the whole business would have gone on your permanent records." 

"If Dad didn't murder us both first." 

"I think he'd have had a stroke before he could have gotten his hands on either of you." Blair turned back to the pizza, reaching for the ladle handle that protruded from a saucepan full of gently-bubbling, fresh tomato puree. 

"You don't sound like such a big proponent of the whole thing as you did a minute ago." 

"Jim, I'm not on a crusade, I'm not championing the rights of siblings to have consensual sex together, I'm just saying that it's _done_ and it isn't _that_ odd. A little non-coercive experimentation between siblings is actually quite common. It's true, though, that it's not common for siblings to fall for each other like you did. I'm also just saying that, as with so many inherently harmless things in our society, all hell would have broken loose if anyone actually knew about it. You still haven't told your Dad about _us_ , have you? And the only people we're out to at the station are our close friends. Hell, we only told Rafe, initially, and that was because he came out to me first." 

"I can't believe you're comparing _our_ relationship with...with me and Stephen..." 

Saving Jim from completing the sentence, Blair sighed, spreading fragrant tomato goo on the crust dough. "What I'm comparing between the two things is the fact that they are both supportive, loving, sexual relationships with no coercion or imbalance of power involved, and they are both considered unacceptable and potentially dangerous to the fabric of society, _by_ society, for no other reason than that they're at a low end of the bell curve, unusual. Okay, in your and Stephen's case, _very_ unusual. A longstanding sexual relationship between close family members usually _is_ some form of coerced activity, and would have to be considered sexual abuse. But in rare cases, like you and Stephen, that isn't so. I'm _not_ saying that I think you should go up to Stephen and give him a tongue tonsillectomy in the middle of Puget Square or anything, and I'm not saying that it's wrong for you to be having upsetting, conflicted feelings about it, and about Stephen in general, too." 

"What do you mean, in general? I love Stephen. I never stopped loving him as a brother." 

"No, but you got madder than hell at him, still are in a lot of ways, and I'm willing to bet he feels the same way." 

"What are you talking about _now_?" 

Blair sighed again, reaching for the shredded mozzarella. "I'm not the one you should have that talk with, though I'm willing to work on it with you if you'd like. It might make it easier for you to talk with Stephen, if you can really _work_ on it with me, but I don't think you want to. I'd have to say some things you wouldn't like, and it'd be too easy for you to go into full-bore denial mode if it was me saying them. If they came from Stephen, you'd have to deal." 

Jim was quiet a moment, listening to Blair chop olives--his one high-fat topping concession to Jim, in return for having to eat vegetarian pizza. 

"You're right. If you mean things I'd like even less than what you've said so far, I don't think I want to go there." Jim sighed and buried his face in his hands. 

He heard Blair approach, wiping his hands on a towel, and then felt the strong, slender, familiar hands in question slide across his shoulders and begin to knead the taut muscles. "Talk to me, Jim. What are you thinking?" 

"I'm wondering why I hate that Stephen and I...having been Stephen and I doesn't bother you." 

"I'm an anthropologist with a psychology minor, and so the idea is a long way from a shocking one to me, and Stephen made you happy--gave you security, and a solid ally, and _family_ \--in a way no one else really could have, during a time when you desperately needed it. What I think you hate is...you percieve me as not caring that _you_ have a problem with it, and that's not true, Jim. I can see you're in pain, and there's nothing abnormal about your feelings, here. There are a million factors to consider. But you won't come to any answers alone. Stephen has half the information you'll need for that. And you have half what he needs, too. Neither of you can come to any kind of closure without the other." 

"Closure? You think that's what we need?" 

"Yes. Less for the relationship itself, and more for what happened with both of you, inside, over the years, as a result of it and the way it...the way it began, the way it went on, the way it ended, and everything that came after with both of you. You have the worst part out of the way; thank God you ran into him again, or you'd never have got him back. I don't see either of you giving in and seeking the other out." 

"I stayed away for _him_." 

"You really think that a year ago, you were still so in love with him you wouldn't have been able to help yourself?" Blair said gently, still massaging. 

Jim was silent. 

Finally he said "Do you want me to say I was afraid? I was afraid. Okay?" 

"There was more going on with both of you than that. Come on, Jim. If you're really ready to do this, he's the one you need to do it with. I'll be here for whatever you need, but I can't take his place there." 

Jim almost seemed to be fighting the relaxation Blair was trying to provide him. "There something else you need to say, big guy?" Blair murmured. 

Jim took a deep breath. "Something that may make you change your mind about how okay my relationship with Stephen back then was." 

"I've got my kevlar on. Fire away." 

"I sometimes...never with you, I mean that, I swear it, never with you. But sometimes...when I..." 

"Jim..." Blair's voice was softly amused. "Are you trying to say you think of him sometimes when you jerk off?" 

Jim let his breath out in a whoosh. "Not...not of him _now_ , no. I think of..." 

"You think of times when you were with him, making love." 

"God. It's so weird that you say that so easily. If you even just said 'having sex' or whatever..." 

"I call it that because it's what you were doing. You need to be able to hear that, or you'll never be able to say it, and if you can't say it, you can't deal with it, period." 

"I know, I know...you're the pseudo-shrink in this conversation, you tell me. Is that weird or not? That I still think...of..." 

"You were a teenager, Jim, a complete hormone storm. Those memories are probably some of the most vivid, intensely sensual you'll ever have of sex. It'd be repression--again--if you _never_ thought of those times, when you're masturbating. Hell, dude, I've got a whole freaking menagerie of fantasies--yeah, which you are OF COURSE a member of, have been since before we were together like this. And a lot of it's from when I was a teenager, too." 

"Chief...? You _should_ have been a shrink." 

"No way, man. Too narrow a focus. I wanna be involved with it _all_ , big guy. But right now I need to go finish being involved with the pizza before the rest of the sauce burns." He patted Jim's head lightly, and Jim obligingly leaned back to receive an upside-down smooch on the mouth. 

"I love you, baby." 

"I love you too. I'm also pretty darn fond of your brother, so no sweat there, okay?" 

"Listen to this carefully, because I'm not gonna be saying this again for a very long time--unless I mean the opposite of what I mean right now. I don't deserve you." 

Blair looked up from the pizza and smiled. "I'll remember you said it, then." 

"And remind me of it when I least want to hear it." 

"Indubitably. Is this enough Bell peppers or not?" 

* * *

"Hell, you would not _believe_ the look on my shrink's face when I told her that," Stephen was chuckling, as he leaned over to freshen up Jim's old-fashioned. They were seated in cushioned wrought-iron chairs on the mosaic-tiled back patio of Stephen's house, on either side of a similarly designed glass-topped table, enjoying the clear view of the golden-red sunset behind the dark line of the Olympics. "She has the calmness thing down, but I thought her eyebrows were going to climb right into her hair. I think it was less the basement thing itself than the way I blew it off." 

"You did tell her we had a semi-finished basement, and he didn't shut the lights off on us or anything?" Jim grinned back and picked his glass up, swishing the mixture of liquid and ice a couple of times before sipping. 

"Oh, hell yeah, but she still didn't seem to think it was an appropriate way to discipline a five-year-old. I kind of gave her a blank look when she asked me if I resented him for that--I mean, shit, that was nothing, next to a lot of it--and I said something like that, like 'It was quite a while ago, I think I'm over the worst of the shock', and she said 'I can see we have a lot of work to do here.'" 

Jim laughed with him. "I guess that's why I don't go. I work hard enough. Besides, I live with Blair, for God's sake." 

"She did say she'd like to see you. In relation to me, I mean. I told her years ago that last I knew, you were very not into shrinks in general, and besides, we still weren't speaking." 

"Why's she want to see me?" 

"Therapists always seem to want to drag the whole family in. She wants to see Dad, too, fat chance there. I do talk about you a lot, about us, I mean. Like the time I just said, when he locked me in the basement and you climbed down in the window-well and did Warner Brothers voices through the screen." 

"I had to keep telling you to stop laughing so loud," Jim smiled reminiscently. "It's amazing the things I've been remembering since Peru started coming back to me. I hadn't thought about that in...I dunno, years." 

"That must...must have been hard, when your friends died here, especially...I know his name, but I don't want to try to pronounce it, I don't want to get it wrong." 

"Incacha," Jim said softly. "Yeah, it was hard. He's the one who helped me with my senses when they resurfaced, the way Sandburg did after I lost them again." He glanced over at Stephen, where the latter was gazing contemplatively toward the western sky. "I remember the one time you backed me up to Dad about them." 

Stephen shrugged. "What was I gonna do? I was right _there_. You read that sign before I could even see it; when the bus passed it, you were right. I knew you'd done it. And we stuck together, remember..." 

"When we could. But we both wound up in the basement that time..." 

"And you told me to go up and tell him I'd just been backing up my big brother, that I knew you couldn't see and hear things other people couldn't..." 

"And you wouldn't do it." 

"I remember being so angry. We weren't lying. He called us liars to our faces so often...it's no wonder we realized there wasn't any point telling him the truth, as opposed to a lie he'd rather hear, or be more likely to believe. We were both so angry we cried." 

"And promised each other not to tell anyone we had," Jim murmured. 

"Yeah," Stephen agreed softly, his eyes dropping to the well-manicured lawn, perusing the expensive landscaping around the natural-rock-rimmed pool. 

"We were good at the game." 

"Old sonofabitch never knew what hit him. Still doesn't. Still thinks...take the woodpile. We told him it collapsed and crashed the back bay window out because you lost control of your bike and ran into it." 

"When it was actually because you'd been climbing it to get onto the roof, when we'd both been told to stay off the pile and the roof both. I was only grounded for two days. He'd likely have used that damn belt on you." 

"I know," Stephen said, very softly. "I always wished he'd leave some marks on one of us with that thing. Or anything else, for that matter." He smiled vaguely. "I remember sitting behind the garage crying, feeling about two inches high, listening to you deliberately take the driveway turn too fast and skid out, about six times, so you'd be appropriately banged up." 

"So was my bike." 

"Every time you hit the pavement, you said 'fuck'. It was the first time I'd ever heard you say that word; I still didn't even know what it meant. It went like this: Sound of tires on gravel, sound of you changing gears, sound of spokes going 'sproing' when you hit the curb, sound of bike spinning out into the fuzzy evergreen bushes that lined the driveway, sound of you hitting the cement...'fuck'. Sound of you getting up, hauling bike out of bushes, getting back on, pedaling off, coming back around the corner, tires on gravel, changing gear, sproing, crunch, thud, 'fuck'..." 

Jim couldn't help chuckling, and Stephen couldn't help joining in, but it wasn't the kind of joke that could last long, and soon they were quiet again. 

"Did I ever say thank you for that?" Stephen wondered, giving Jim a sidelong look. 

"You didn't need to," Jim said softly. "I went back behind the garage to get you to help me set the stage, before I sent you in to use the phone to call Dad, and rat out about Jimmy going too fast, wrecking the woodpile and smashing that window...and I was pretty pissed by that point, I won't deny it, having to go through all that to save your skin, but you were crying so hard..." he trailed off. 

"You picked me up and told me it would be all right. You wiped my face and got it filthy with the dust all over you, sticking to the tears," Stephen smiled. 

"I didn't have the heart to act pissed. You looked so...sad, so honestly _sorry_ , sitting there crying. I couldn't hold it against you. After all, I was big enough to make it onto the roof by climbing out my window, and you couldn't. At least, that was what I told myself at the time. Hell, I felt like I should be apologizing to _you_ , the way you looked." 

"You know, it was supposed to be a communal thing, the game. I watch your back, you watch mine. And I did bail you out sometimes, took some flak I didn't have coming to me to keep you covered. Usually some kind of Stevie-isn't-old-enough-to-know-better thing. But I seem to recall it usually worked the other way around. For that, I think I do want to say thank you, even though I know you're going to say 'Don't mention it'." 

"Don't mention it." 

Blue eyes locked with blue for a moment, and they both smiled hesitantly; then Stephen suddenly got up, picking up his empty beer bottle. "How's the drink?" 

"I'm fine, Stevie." 

Stephen paused--less than a second, too little a time for anyone but a Sentinel to see it, but Jim did see it, the barest hesitation as Stephen started to step across the sliding glass door track into the family room; he recovered and continued out of sight, returning momentarily with a fresh beer. "Sorry that took a minute--my cleaning service employs a lot of college kids," he said, unscrewing the cap and tossing it onto the table as he sat. "I've learned to keep the good beer in the basement fridge." 

Jim chuckled. 

"Um, Jim," Stephen said, adjusting his posture downward in the chair, propping one jeans-clad ankle on the opposite knee, tapping his beer bottle against the chair arm. "You, uh, seem kinda quiet. Did you have something on your mind besides dinner? Which was great, by the way, Blair must be rubbing off on you. Har de har." 

Jim rolled his eyes, but smiled at the forced-sounding pun. "You're such a stellar wit, Stephen." 

"Blair okay? Everything fine at work?" 

"Blair's Blair, I'm me, we're us...though I'm having kind of a dry spell in bed because of Blair's class load. He sleeps practically on the kitchen table half the time. Oh, and Blair told the story of our exploding crock pot yesterday, in the bullpen, which Brian--Rafe, remember him?" 

"Hell yeah, only guy in your office better-looking than Blair." 

"I wouldn't go that far, but anyway, he managed to beat the creamed-chipped-beef-in-the-air-vents descriptions with a dating horror story--him and some guy from Juvie, who works with a lot of troubled kids. The guy basically tried to analyze Brian's head all night. Brian said he was tempted to give the guy the finger and ask him if he thought it indicated some kind of generalized hostility toward authority figures--'Oh, wait, I _am_ an authority figure! Well, it's been great, but I have to go home and sneer at myself in the mirror; I'll call you when I get all my issues worked out'." Stephen cracked up. Jim continued "He did some imitations of how blood-chillingly _earnest_ the guy acted, just getting right in Brian's _face_ , and I was _dying_ , I mean it, we all were, Megan was bright red. Never knew Brian was so talented." 

"Never knew you were so good at changing a subject." 

"You asshole." 

They both grinned and Stephen returned immediately "But you love me anyway." 

Jim felt his throat close, his expression freezing. Stephen saw it, and his own grin faltered, hard. "Um...Jim?" he gulped uncertainly, his eyes going haunted. 

Jim looked away, licking his lips, closing his eyes a moment. Blair had given him a few pointers for this part, but he wished he had the young man here to hold his hand while he acted on them. He managed to look back at Stephen. "Do you...promise not to get pissed if I ask you something?" 

"Uh...well..." Stephen cleared his throat, seemed to suddenly remember his beer, and took a quick swallow as a delaying tactic. "I guess if I want an answer to my question, I kinda have to. Shoot." 

"You do...remember, don't you?" 

Their eyes were locked. Stephen was perfectly still. 

"Don't you?" Jim whispered, barely audible. 

They stayed like that another moment; then Stephen abruptly got up, taking his beer automatically, and walked slowly to the edge of the pool, which took him out of the direct sunlight. He gazed down at the faintly shifting surface of the water, ribbons of orange-glowing cirrus clouds set against deep azure reflected, glimmering, therein. "If I ask you what you mean, you'll walk out of here, won't you." 

"No. But you might have to see a grown man cry," Jim said, and cleared his own dry throat, regretting the attempt at levity as soon as it left his mouth. It wasn't hard to see that it didn't matter that much, though. The last sentence might not have been said, for all Stephen reacted to it. Jim continued "I don't mean...I'm not trying to say that it didn't mean anything to...hell. Sandburg told me it was possible--not very likely, from some things he says he's seen, but possible--that you'd repressed the memories. After all, that trait does run in the family." 

Stephen was quiet. 

Jim said softly "Please. Tell me, Stephen." 

"Of course I remember," Stephen graveled, his voice shaking. The bottle fell out of his hand and bounced once on the thick grass, its contents foaming into the green, coincidentally away from Stephen's tasseled, Italian leather loafers. His loss of composure had been sudden and extreme; he might remember, but he definitely hadn't been keeping the memories near the surface of his mind. He might not even have thought of them for years. Jim knew it was possible to do that without active repression. He'd done it often enough himself. 

Jim got up. He wasn't sure what he should do--approaching didn't seem to be the way to go, considering Stephen's total discomfiture--Jim knew his own tendency was to bolt under such circumstances, flushed like a startled deer--but he couldn't think of anything to say, either. He took a few steps toward his brother, feeling the sudden upwelling of a sensation he could only remember having, for years, about Blair, or any of his friends who'd been hurt near him...but this was older, more basic, more primal. This man, this was...this was _his_ , not his possession--he belonged to this as much as it belonged to him--but his blood, his own, part of the same thing, his...little brother. 

His thirty-five-year-old little brother, he reminded himself firmly. This was not little Stevie. This was not even the young man whom he'd last seen lying rumpled, shaggy-haired, deep in the heavy, exhausted sleep of that frantic and utterly draining sort of lovemaking, as only the young can very often make it. There'd been a folded slip of paper on the pillow next to him; the words were hidden, but Jim knew them, he'd written them. "Love remembers. Jimmy." 

"Stevie..." 

Stephen's head fell back as his muscled body went taut, fists clenching. "Jim. Don't." 

"Can you look at me, at least?" 

"No." 

"Why not?" 

"I might kill you." 

Jim swallowed, hard. "I can stand still for a couple of swings if it would help." 

Stephen laughed mirthlessly, the sound grinding, like a gear full of gravel. "You always were a sick fuck, Jim." 

Jim gulped. It didn't mean what it sounded like. It was an in-joke. A very sex-related in-joke. A very love-related in-joke. 

For a moment, it was twenty years ago. 

* * *

"Hey." Stephen tossed his hair back, an arc of chlorinated water flying behind him as the wet mass slapped the back of his head. "Ellison. You sick fuck." 

"Something wrong, Stevie?" Jim practically giggled, his other arm coming up around his brother, a flat hand stroking lazily down the front of the wiry, muscular body that was still filling out, but had probably reached the greatest height it would attain, just an inch or two shorter than Jim. He had the other hand in Stephen's shorts, gently stroking the firm flesh that the slightly heated pool water couldn't keep from continuing to harden. 

"Well, not to put too fine a point on it, you're playing with my cock. Isn't there some kind of public lewdness law or something?" Jim could hear the smile in his voice as he pulled the younger man's back firmly against his own front, complete with its own flag-standard grinding eagerly against the rowing-crew-firm ass pressed easily to it. 

"Who's a sick fuck? You're loving it. And it's dark out here." 

It was; and the pool lights weren't on. It was their own pool, but their father's bedroom faced the back of the house. It was one of their risky escapades, the thrill of it almost--hell, completely--irresistible to the two young men. They floated low in the water, their voices soft, but still... 

Stephen reached back and seized Jim's ass, squeezing and kneading the firm flesh as he rocked with Jim's motions, letting his own legs come open, trusting to Jim's powerful arm around him to keep his head above water. "Uhhh...still say you're the...sick fuck...uhh, God...harder, Jim..." 

"What'd we...come out here for anyway, to...mmmnnnhhh...do laps...? You wanted it, wanted...this...oh, yeah..." Stephen was grinding back against him hard now, cooperating completely with Jim's movements and the rhythm of his strokes. "So who's a sick...fuck...oh, fuck, yeah..." 

"Love you, Jim...c'mere, like this, let me...turn around..." Stephen wriggled around in Jim's arms, reaching past him to grab the edge of the pool, taking care to keep the tops of their heads as low as possible, pinning Jim to the side and pulling himself up against his brother, hard, as Jim grabbed Stephen's ass and pulled their groins together, the rocking and grinding motions resuming. Faster, the water buoying them as Stephen held them steady, Jim held them together... 

And then Jim yanked Stephen's suit down, followed it with his own, and pulled them back together again... 

"Jim, you...sick...fuck...oh, _yeah_..." and in that moment, as they kissed like they intended to literally devour each other, deep, fierce, penetrating, anyone could have seen them, their father, the neighbors, the fucking cops for all they cared, there was nothing in the world but each other, nothing, nothing, nothing nothing nothing at all-- 

"Oh God Stevie oh GOD--" 

"Do it, Jim, come on, do it with me, let's do it--" 

Again, their mouths came together...and then their bodies came, together. 

"Oh God," Jim whispered again as Stephen managed to support them both, resting against the side of the pool. He got his eyes open, met his brother's, and smiled in deep satiation. "So I guess 'you sick fuck' means 'I love you'?" 

Stephen smiled back, open adoration in his sleekly water-shining face. "You're a sick fuck, Jimmy. A _really_ sick fuck." They both grinned, and Stephen kissed him tenderly, deeply, soft and affectionate, touching Jim's lightly stubbled cheek with his fingertips. 

"You too, Stevie." Another warm kiss. "Tomorrow...want to try sneaking out here without the suits?" 

Stevie smiled slowly. "I dare you. Sick fuck." 

"I love you too, Stevie. Love you." More kisses, sweet and anxious and joyful. 

"Love you, Jim..." 

The next day, they'd been unable to keep from laughing scrambled eggs out various orifices at the breakfast table, as the unwitting pool man, visible through the dining room windows, calmly changed the filters. Sally could only roll her eyes and throw up her hands. "I don't even want to know, you two." 

"No, you likely don't, Sally," Stephen agreed. When she turned her back to grab the juice from the sideboard, Jim mouthed "Sick fuck" at Stephen, who gave him an air-kiss and then kicked him under the table. 

"Ow!" 

"You started it." That was it; they couldn't stop laughing. Sally just plunked the juice down on the table and said "You tell me when you feel like eating. I'll finish serving then. If your father hadn't had to leave for Buenos Aires so early this morning...you're just getting too big for me to handle alone." 

* * *

"Stevie. Look at me, please." 

"You _really_ don't want me to do that, Jim." 

"Stevie--" 

"If you call me that one more time I'm going to break your neck or die in the attempt." 

Jim was quiet. Blair would probably tell him his best move now was to wait. It was hell, but it was probably still his best move. 

Finally, Stephen did speak again, still not having moved. "Your partner put you up to this?" 

"No. He just...listened to me, when I needed to talk about it. And when I said I was...going to talk to you." 

"Why, then? Now, after this long? We've been doing fine." 

"Because...I...really think we both need it. Please don't think that it...that it's easy, or that it was an easy thing to decide. To...even think about. But for one thing, I...need to say I'm sorry." 

Stephen, still unmoving otherwise, folded his arms, slowly relaxing from his tensed posture. His voice was a little shaky, but calm--ostentatiously so. "You're sorry." 

Jim sighed, his head falling. Blair hadn't had to tell him to expect a bad reaction to any kind of apology--though he supposed a lack of apology wouldn't have inspired anything much better. 

"Am I gonna regret asking what, specifically, you're sorry about?" 

"I'm not sorry I loved you. Or that we're...speaking again, finally." 

"Hm. All right, then. Did you know you were lying to me the last morning?" 

"Yes." 

Stephen was silent a moment; even from his vantage point, Jim could see the muscles in his throat working. When he finally spoke again, his voice was the same, artificial calm. "That what you're sorry for?" 

"For one thing." 

"What else?" 

Jim took a prepatory breath, moistening his lips. He wasn't used to this. Even now, years later, Stephen was still the one more comfortable with emotions other than the standard, safe, male "laughter at a good joke, anger, or lust". Stephen was more comfortable with showing the rest, with _feeling_ sincere emotion in the first place, as witness his having been seeing a psychologist, voluntarily, for years. There were plenty of _women_ who couldn't be dragged to a shrink unless they were in pretty damn dire straits. And hell, as far as Jim knew, Stephen wasn't even gay, or not mostly, the occasional comment like the one he'd made about Rafe aside. In the time since they'd reunited, Stephen had only ever mentioned seeing women. 

But here they were, Stephen shut down in order to deal, Jim killing himself to stay open in order to do the same thing. 

"I may only be three years older than you, Stephen--" 

"Two years and nine months." 

"Um, yeah." Jim swallowed and began again. "It's a much bigger difference at the age we were when...when it all started..." 

"'It all' what?" 

Jim sighed. "You're really not helping me, here." 

"You want help? Sure, I'll give you some help, Jim. After all, I'm the one with all the shrinkage. You think you should have stopped me, that the year or so we...we were so _fucking_ in love was a mistake, and it's your 'fault' that it happened." 

"No--hell. All right, something like that, but--we always loved each other, Stephen. I didn't have to let...to let sex become a part of it." 

"You are one stupid motherfucker if you think that whether we had sex or not would have made the slightest damn difference in how we felt about each other." 

"Well, yeah, that's my point." 

"Christ, you _are_ stupid. I _mean_ \--" Stephen finally turned--whirled, more like--and lost some of his controlled demeanor. "--that we would have _wanted_ each other just as much if we'd never touched each other. Maybe I was too young, for a year or so before I figured it out, to know just what it was I wanted, but I knew I wanted _something_ more--maybe we always touched, when they couldn't see us--hell, ever since Mom left we spent half the nights in each other's beds. I only stopped sitting in your lap when I got too big to keep from falling off, and after _that_ we'd sit wrapped up together if we knew we wouldn't get caught. If that had been enough...I would never have kissed you the first time. And you know which kiss I mean, not any of the ones that came before that. I was in _love_ with you, Jim. It wasn't some misguided hero-worship thing, though Jesus knows you _were_ my hero. Oh, shit." Suddenly he seemed to freeze, the tumble of words cutting off, as his eyes squeezed shut. "You said you aren't sorry you loved me." 

"I'm not." 

Stephen took a couple of steady breaths. "You better not be about to tell me that you never loved me as anything but your brother, or like I said I'll--" 

" _No_ , Stevie, no, no--" Jim shushed, instinctively coming forward to lay a hand on Stephen's shoulder, touching his face and hair with the other, in a soothing motion that came as naturally to him after twenty years as it ever had. Stephen shuddered. Jim couldn't help it; he pulled Stephen close, pressing the other man's head down to his shoulder. "I was in love with you, Stevie. I was. Shhh..." 

Stephen's arms came up and clenched with all the strength of a large, fit, grown man around Jim's waist, nearly crushing the breath out of him. "You bastard," Stevie whispered. He seemed to be holding his breath then. Jim knew why. Stevie'd always done that, even as a toddler, when he was flatly refusing to cry. 

"It's okay, Stevie," Jim whispered. "It's okay to be mad at me. When I said I was sorry...I don't know, it just seems like I ought to have been able to handle it some other way, that I...did what I wanted instead of what was best." 

"It was what I wanted, too." 

"I know. But I was older, I should have..." 

"Jim!" Stephen pulled away just enough to raise his head and meet Jim's eyes. "You are _two years and nine months_ older than I am. You are now and you were then. You didn't have any more perspective than I did, or so little it hardly matters. We were _alone_ , Jim, there was no one we could trust, no one to give us any insight to the things we were feeling, no one to...maybe if we'd been allowed to see a psychologist, like some teacher or other of ours was always recommending, but of course the head shitbag wouldn't hear of it--we could have seen what was happening with us, and maybe it wouldn't have gone so far in our...in our thoughts, in our hearts. Not because it was unhealthy--coping mechanisms and all sorts of emotions that wouldn't be healthy under normal circumstances _are_ healthy and normal under certain _abnormal_ circumstances--but because it was dangerous. But it did go on, and you and I did happen, and it was no less real for that. It was _real_ , Jim." 

"Stevie, it's okay, I'm not denying that. I guess you're right. I didn't mean to...make it sound like I made it sound, I just wanted to tell you...that maybe that...okay, unreasonable guilt was part of why I..." 

"Part of why you shit all over me when I contacted you?" Stephen abruptly let go of him and turned away again. 

Jim was quiet a long moment, feeling a familiar sick stabbing through his chest. "Yeah," he choked. 

"And didn't speak to me again until we almost literally ran right into each other fifteen years later?" 

"Yeah." 

Stephen sighed. The remaining gold light in the sky was fading; the high herringbone clouds that had been reflecting in the pool were no longer glowing; the blue of the sky was closer to midnight than azure. There were a few lights on inside, but their glow was minimal; only if Jim dialed his sight up would their light be very useful. 

Stephen lowered himself slowly to sit on the rocks of the pool's edge, cross-legged. His heavy cotton Live Aid tee shirt strained a little as he rested his elbows on his knees, slumping in an exhausted posture. In some ways, Jim thought, as he noticed the tee shirt, though Stephen was all smart business suits and savvy on the job, he seemed determined to remain a member of the younger generation as long as he could. 

Well, he certainly wasn't losing his hair as fast as Jim was, and it was still heavy and glossy, no bald spot...but, although he still wore his bangs floppy and long, that receding hairline was going to give the lie in a few more years if he didn't invest in some Rogaine. Jim smiled a little, then sat down next to him, not too close, but within arm's reach. 

"Okay," Stephen sighed, with the air of a person enumerating the items of a list, which he was. "You've apologized for deliberately lying to me the last morning, telling me you'd come back when you had no intention of it, letting me...letting me believe. For years. You've apologized for shutting me down when I tried to see you after you got home. Jesus, that hurt, Jim, it hurt just as bad all over again...no, no, never mind." He cleared his throat. "And you apologized for not speaking to me again until it was to notify me I was a suspect in your murder investigation. I'm surprised Banks let you stay on that, by the way." 

"He asked me if I wanted off it." 

"Why didn't you take him up?" 

"Couldn't trust anybody else to break themselves trying to find the real killer when the evidence was pointing to you." 

"I'd like to believe that." 

"You can. Stevie, I had to be...hard, I couldn't...I couldn't let myself..." Jim sighed in frustration. 

"Okay, Jim, we'll get back to that. There's one thing you still have to apologize for." 

Jim was quiet. 

"I'm waiting." 

"I...don't..." 

"For leaving in the first place, you fucking moron." Stephen's voice was flat. 

"I can't apologize for that." 

"You'd better, you sonofabitch." 

"I _can't_. It was the only thing left to do!" 

"You still have no idea what you did to me, do you?" 

"Of course I do! I mean, hell, you _told_ me, that last morning, but I already knew. And like I told you then, I had to make sure you were _safe_. You weren't, with me there. The kind of shit that might have happened to you if anyone...and I couldn't trust myself to stay away from you...fine, to stay away from your body. And you were no help at all there." 

"I didn't have any interest in staying away from your body, Jim, so why should I have bothered?" 

"Oh, Jesus, Steve, do we have to go through it all point-by-point? Even Blair was lecturing me about the kind of danger we were putting ourselves in! Maybe...if it had been an occasional thing. We could maybe have been...affectionate with each other, we wouldn't have had to stop touching entirely, if we'd just been more careful with the obvious stuff. We were getting pretty stupid toward the end, Stephen, you _know_ that." 

"I know that. Half of it was my idea. It was just you who seemed to think it was all you. Hate to break it to you, but I was a teenage kid with a rampaging set of nuts, too. Yeah, we were getting stupid, Jim, but that's just it, _we_ were getting stupid. And even if we were, it was for the right reasons. I felt just like you did, damn it. I hated having to hide it. I hated having to let Dad think he was succeeding in setting us against each other like a couple of damn fighting cocks. Yeah, I know--if we hadn't, he'd just have gotten worse and then where the hell would we have been, I know...shit, it's not like he didn't succeed at all, even as things were. But it was perfectly normal for a couple of horny teenagers in love--who were getting away with something GREAT--" Stephen suddenly choked on a slightly hysterical laugh, echoed by Jim. "And Jesus. It WAS great, wasn't it?" 

"Hell yes. You're right, I mean, _look_ at it--sometimes I can't _believe_ the sheer magnitude of what we managed to pull off. All of it, I mean, shitting Dad completely, for _years_ , not just the...the making love, near the end." 

Stephen's face smoothed out of laughter as he looked suddenly at Jim; Jim lost his smirk, too. "You said it," Stephen said. 

Jim just nodded. 

"Thank you." 

"Hell, it's no more than you deserve, for God's sake. I told you, I'm not ashamed of it. It's just so...God. It's so...so _close_ to me. Do you know what I mean? And losing it, I..." 

Stephen gazed contemplatively at him. "It hurt you too, then. Losing it. Losing me." 

"Stephen..." Jim sighed. "There are things you just _don't_ notice in a barracks. Like maybe the kid next to you under his pillow, crying in the middle of the night. I was one of those kids. But I wasn't homesick, exactly. I wasn't scared, I wasn't traumatized by the whole weird transition, being broken down and built back up--I didn't give a shit about jogging 'til I dropped or getting screamed at by the sergeants. Though I have to admit they seldom felt compelled to scream at me." 

"That doesn't surprise me," Stephen murmured. 

Jim smiled a little, then finished softly "It was just you. Only you. Sometimes...guys did talk a little, surface stuff, about what they'd be happiest to get back to after their stint, two-year, four-year, whatever, and what they were looking forward to on their first leave...the only thing I ever said was 'I miss my brother.' Stevie...I know...I knew then what it was like for you, I did. And I understand even better now; talking to Blair can be a real eye-opener if you can just keep him on the subject. But it was like that for me, too. Me...protecting you, being the older brother...that...dynamic wasn't the biggest part of what we had, just one part. And the rest was just the same for me. You were...you were as much everything to me as I was to you, Stevie." 

Stephen's throat clenched, his eyes closed, and he turned away again. He took a couple of breaths, and said in a slightly broken whisper "When you say things like that...I want to throw myself in your arms, and I want to knock your teeth down your throat at the same time." 

"Blair says that's normal," Jim said, near-whispering, too. "He says I feel like that inside, too, that I just...the guilt keeps me from realizing it." 

Stephen looked back around, a faint shimmering still in his eyes, but his brows lowered in confused anger. "Why the _hell_ would you want to deck _me_? _You_ were the one who left!" 

"I _had_ to! We were _insane_ , Stephen! We had this incredible achievement under our belts, and there we were, begging fate to blow it sky-high for us!" 

"We were _kids_! We couldn't be expected to...to just resign ourselves to the practical side of it, just sigh and shrug at the injustice of it! Kids don't have the perspective to do that!" 

"I KNOW! That's why I LEFT! And if you could tell that much--what you just said, I mean--you could have tried a little harder to understand. You could have made it a little easier for me. I felt like I was fucking _killing_ you, I felt like a total shit!" 

"Jim, you _are_ a total shit," Stephen growled in disgust, getting up and starting to walk off--not toward the house, or Jim would have grabbed him and stopped him. Tried, at least. In any case, Stephen was moving down farther along the pool side, toward the terraced natural-rock patio and steps down near the shallow end. He wasn't ending the conversation, he just wanted some distance. 

"Great, I'm a total shit now. So far in this conversation I've been a bastard, a stupid motherfucker, a fucking moron, and a sonofabitch." 

Stephen was leaning against one of the willows whose branches drooped in a shading enclosure over the stone patio. "You forgot sick fuck," he said faintly. 

"No, I didn't," Jim said quietly. There was a pause, and he continued "I knew this was going to be rough. If you can't do it, you can't do it. The things we have to say to each other aren't all going to be rational, and the feelings we have about the whole thing aren't all fair to each other. But they have to be said, Stevie. If we keep walking away from each other--" 

"I KNOW! I know, damn it, I'm the one with more than fifteen years of therapy behind me, like I said." He sighed. "I just needed some space. That hurt, Jim." 

"I know." 

"I mean...you're the one who blithely made the decision to leave and fucking enlisted without telling me, you lied to me the last few hours we had together, made me think...made me think there was some point...do you know how long I kept that note? I thought it...that you were telling me to remember, because you'd be back, you'd come back to me someday." 

Jim closed his eyes in chagrin. "I meant...that it was...that it had been real, real love, and so I'd always remember. And I hoped you would, too." 

"Yeah, well, I figured out I'd made a slight misinterpretation after that phone call sixteen years ago. That's when I started looking for a good shrink. Not to mention the fact that you..." Stephen trailed off. 

"The fact that I what?" Jim said softly. When he got no reply, he began to move toward Stephen, slowly, walking along the stones that edged the pool. "The fact that I was the older one? That I protected you, and took that protection away? That you had no one to take care of you?" 

Stephen was still motionless and silent. 

Jim stopped, close enough to touch him in the dimness beneath the overhanging branches, and the slender fronds that swayed slightly in the light air currents. "See what I mean when I said not all of the things that we're feeling are rational? Part of you believes that. Maybe not a part you're very comfortable with..." 

"Shit. Instead of getting a therapist, I should have just married Blair." 

Jim managed to chuckle grimly along with his brother. "That would've been one way to do it, yeah. Stephen...I want to ask you something. It's definitely something I don't have a right to ask, under the circumstances, but it's...okay, Blair thinks it's one of the reasons I'm angry at you inside." 

"What the hell. You're the one with the Special Forces training, it likely won't be _your_ neck that gets broken if I lose it." 

"If you missed me that much, if it was that important to you--for so long--to believe I was coming back, whatever we would have been to each other--" 

"I didn't think you'd still want to be my lover, Jim, and as I got older I knew that a lot of the reasons we were in love--lovers--to begin with, weren't part of our lives any more. I just...wanted you _back_. I _needed_ you, you were the only part of growing up that was...that was good. You were what I had to _have_ from growing up to feel like a whole person." 

"I...I guess I know. It wasn't quite the same for me. I had the whole disaster in Peru thing, the time I was down there before they found me...the lost memories, just a lot of issues that seemed to overshadow almost everything else. Then the senses resurfaced, and you know that whole story. But I do understand, Stephen, and what I want to know is...if what you just said is true, if I meant that much to you, if you needed me so bad...why didn't you try harder? Why didn't you make more than that one attempt? I mean...if I loved someone...I mean, if I _needed_ him that much..." 

"Because you SHIT ALL OVER ME, like I said, you...fuck it, I've gotta quit calling you things, Dana says it's totally unproductive and she's right. A good vent, but unproductive at...this." 

"Dana's your shrink?" 

"Yeah." 

"She look like Scully?" 

"Um. A little, yeah." Stephen sighed, obviously recognizing Jim's attempt to give him a minute to collect himself and answer coherently before he wound up just lashing out again. "She's a little thing. Fair. Her hair's not red, though. Jim, I understood when you told me that you thought it was best if we didn't write to each other while you were gone, that it would only make it harder for us both to get used to not having the other there, that we needed the space to get our heads in a different place, where we could function without automatically including the other in every thought and idea. But...there were so many opportunities you _could_ have contacted me...after 'it', whatever the current 'it' was, was over. While you were in school on the military's tab. Before you joined Special Forces. Before you left for Peru. You even wrote to Dad, but you didn't even mention me except to tell him to tell me you sent your greetings. Your fucking _greetings_ , Jim. Not even your love." Stephen panted lightly a moment, controlling his temper. "That time was all so mixed up, I never knew where you were, they had you in officer training, finishing college credits and for all I know, Special Forces training at the same time. I knew there had to be breaks--times between one stage and the next where there was opportunity--but I couldn't have any idea when they were." 

"Something like that. It _was_ a pretty complex situation." 

"You were the best and the brightest, weren't you? They _made_ it work for you, didn't they." 

"Yeah...I guess so." 

"So, there I was, with this mantra running through my head. 'I don't know how long it'll be, Stevie, but I'll come back to you--'" 

Jim cringed inside, hard. 

"--and I didn't know what I _should_ be thinking, the way things were going. I'd just...despair, and then I'd feel guilty for doing it. After all, you _told_ me you'd come back, and we _never_ lied to each other. Well, not about anything important. Things like 'did you remember to wipe your sweat out of my goalie mask before you put it back in my room' and shit like that, but not anything that mattered." 

"You didn't wipe out my goalie mask?" 

"Jim." 

"I'm sorry. This isn't easy for me, either." 

"Yeah, so you say." Stephen sighed and continued. "So, there I was. For years. Getting my hopes up when I heard about things like your graduation--which you didn't attend, so Dad decided there was no reason to bother trying to see you, since you were heading straight on for more specialized training anyway; he sent our congratulations, you sent your greetings, same as always--and being disappointed every time. 

"So eventually, you let Dad know you're planning on joining the Cascade PD. Well, finally. You were back. You were going to be _here_ , be _home_. I waited a while; didn't hear from you. I had a few thoughts; maybe for some reason you couldn't find me. Maybe you were busy, getting your life back here in order again, didn't want to bother me until some things were taken care of. So I worked up my nerve, managed to get your home phone from the PD academy records, and called. I don't suppose you remember what you said." 

Jim was silent a moment, staring at the stones at his feet. Finally he muttered, "'How did you get this number'." 

"What's that, Jim? Didn't catch it." Stephen finally turned around, resting his spine against the tree trunk and folding his arms, looking, if anyone had been there to see it, amazingly like Jim when he was pissed. 

"I said 'How did you get this number', I remember, Stephen, I'm not likely to ever forget." 

"Neither am I. Well, that shut me down just pretty good, Jim. I almost passed out. I couldn't see anything for a second but the rug heading right for my face. You may remember that I dropped the phone." 

"Um...I don't think I do." 

"Well, I did, when my knees hit the floor and I grabbed the edge of my desk to keep from going down all the way. I managed to pick the phone back up with my free hand, but I don't remember exactly what I said after that, babbled something about getting the number from the PD. I have rather mercifully blocked most of the rest of that conversation out. How about you? Can you tell me how it went?" 

"I'd rather not." 

"Well, in any event...oh, it was just _pathetic_ , Jim. You'd have been disgusted. I didn't do anything for over a week but drink and cry. I damn near lost my job. The only reason I kept it was because my secretary--you've heard me mention Marah? Marah Simmons?" 

"Yes. Your financial analyst friend." 

"That's her, she was my secretary at the time. She took in that copy of Newsweek with you on the cover and did a fabulous bullshit to my boss, explained that yes, it was the same 'Ellison', and apparently you'd recently been reported missing in action, and I was so distraught over the loss of my brother, et cetera, et cetera. Dolt was too complacent to give a damn about checking on your current status, and she knew that. She even threw in some tears and sighs over her concern for me. She got the time I'd been out to be considered my vacation for that six months, with an advance on the next six months--she thought I'd better keep my sick time in reserve. Then she came back to my apartment and threw me into a cold shower. Then she helped me find Dana." 

"Did she...know..." 

"She'd heard me, in drunken hysterics, sob something about how much I loved you and how could you do this to me, and assumed we'd had _some_ kind of falling out; I get the feeling she may have heard some specifics that made her wonder, because when I was sober, she did something interesting. Instead of asking me to clarify it, or even asking me if I wanted to tell her the problem...she asked me if _she_ wanted to know. I told her she definitely did not. She said 'Okay, then please, don't tell me. Let's get you a professional.' Not that I told Dana, either. Fifteen years and I didn't even tell my fucking shrink. About the sex part, at least." 

"You haven't told your _shrink_?" 

"Let's just say I decided to take a behavioristic approach to dealing with my problems as opposed to a psychoanalytical one, and _drop_ it, Jim." 

Jim stared at the ground again. "Then for what it's worth, I'm glad you had such a good friend to help you." 

"So am I. I'm not sure what might have happened. I wouldn't have deliberately committed suicide--I really don't think I have that in me, no matter what might go down. I'm just not one of those people who could. But I'm willing to bet the chances were high of my falling off a balcony or driving over an embankment if she hadn't stepped in." 

Jim was silent, unmoving. 

"Have I answered your question? Why I didn't try again, if you meant that much to me?" 

Jim nodded, remembered how dark it was, and said "Yes. You have. And if I tell you I'm sorry--not that you don't have the right, I probably would, too--you'll deck me, won't you?" 

After a moment, Stephen said "If that had been the first thing you said just now. Since you said that instead, no, I won't. So go ahead." 

"I'm sorry. You will never, ever know how much." 

"Apology received. Thank you." 

"That's the best I'm going to get, isn't it." 

"Is it that surprising that it's the best I can do? It's still a little raw for me to be saying things like 'Oh, don't worry about it, Jim, it's all water under the bridge.'" 

"I know. You're right." 

"And are you still angry that I wasn't more help when you told me you'd enlisted and were leaving me alone?" 

Jim rubbed his face with both hands, sighing. "Separate issue, Stevie. Related, yeah, but separate." 

"Okay, separate. Now answer me." 

"I guess part of me is. A part I'm not proud of. Like you're not very proud of the part that feels like an abandoned waif, despite the fact that you believe--sorry, despite the fact that you _know_ \--that you were as involved and responsible and as much of an instigator in everything as I was." 

"Guess we'll just have to wait those parts out, won't we? Both of us." 

"However long it takes. Yeah. Blair says it's real--but not rational, so there's no point trying to reason with it; I just have to accept it." 

"Dana says something similar about things like that, though she's been to school enough to be able to add some coping strategies to the end of that statement. Though I have to admit, the biggest one is 'learn to accept it without guilt'." 

" _I_ have to admit, if it hadn't been for the guilt...Stevie, I had really convinced myself I was doing the best thing for _you_ , and that if...if my not coming back really bothered you, you'd have tried harder to connect with me again. I did manage to believe that for years. But since we've gotten together again, it's started preying on me...worst over the last few months or so...I kept bringing it up to Sandburg, then telling him to mind his own business." 

"Surprised he puts up with you." 

"He knows me. It just rolled off him. He knew I'd talk about it--and apologize to him--eventually. And I did. And for me, it didn't even take that long. Don't get me wrong, I _told_ him about it around the time we got together as a couple. But I didn't...I didn't discuss my feelings about it. But we talked about it in fits and snatches, he had to pick it all up--the way it really was, the details--well, not THOSE details--in a few dribs and drabs at a time." 

"He's always been so fucking _patient_ with you." 

"I know." 

"I'd have ripped your head off eventually." 

"I'd have done the same thing. Which is why we're Ellisons and he's not, I guess." Jim ventured a smile, though he figured Stephen probably couldn't see it. 

Either he could, or he just decided to smile, too. 

They were quiet a moment. 

"We're not anywhere near done, are we," Stephen said softly. 

"As Blair would say, we are _so_ not done," Jim agreed. "I think we're just...tired. Do you want to give up for now? The topic, I mean. Take a break." 

"Um...well, I've done most of the talking, you know. And a lot of the talking you've done has been justifying yourself." 

"A lot of it's been apologizing, too." 

"Yeah, I know. It has. Hell, I guess we could at least go in and get comfortable." 

"I kind of like it out here, actually." 

"Fine, let's stay out _here_ and get comfortable. You want another drink?" 

"Well...one. This might feel easier with enough ethanol inside us, but I bet it'd be a lot less productive." 

"You're right. One, then. Come on, let's sit down. I'll get the drinks. And that beer bottle, or my gardener will chew me out." 

* * *

Stephen had also turned on the smaller stereo in the family room, leaving the door open, with the screen closed against the few mosquitoes that were any kind of problem this time of year; slow, smooth, bass-guitar-led jazz flowed quietly through the early night air. They were seated again next to the patio table, but Stephen had taken one of the chairs near Jim's, rather than the one on the opposite side. 

"Blair expecting you back any particular time?" 

"Are you kidding? If I came home too soon he'd throw me in the truck and send me back here." 

Stephen smiled a little, took a pull off his daiquiri. And it was a pull, not a sip. Fortunately, while not quite as big as Jim, Stephen was definitely no lightweight. He could handle one slightly over-the-top-on-the-rum daiquiri, no problem. 

"We've talked about why I didn't try to get in contact with you more than once, and I've heard the short version of why you didn't want to see me. I think I'd like the long version." 

"Then I'm glad you doubled up on the rum." Jim sighed. "You deserve it, I suppose. It's just that it's been...I haven't had that much time, since I started to realize just how deeply and completely I was bullshitting myself, to work on it. It all kind of came to a head and I had...I _had_ to talk to you. It...I'd be going along doing whatever the hell, and suddenly it would feel like my heart was breaking. Stabs in the chest, I mean, and my throat would close, and I'd fucking tear up, and finally one time while it was happening I realized that...way back in the recesses of my twisted brain were the rattling echoes of this fucked-up eighteen-year-old, sobbing, 'Stevie, Stevie...' Started happening at work. That's when I knew I was well and truly screwed." He paused, had a swallow of his drink, and continued "It likely started because we've been...socializing again. Brought together by a murder case, Jesus. How's that for melodrama?" 

"Ellisons have always been big on that, God knows," Stephen said quietly, his posture attentive as he listened. "Can you work backward from that? Try...when you told Blair. Told him the truth, I mean." 

"Okay." Jim paused to clear his throat again, and thought for a minute. "I'm pretty sure he already knew something wasn't...hell, let me start over, it's kind of connected to our getting together as a couple. It happened...like breathing, with Blair and me. I mean, I knew I was fond of him, maybe I didn't want to realize how fond, didn't want to complicate things. But it hasn't been complicated at all. We were physically affectionate with each other, casual about it, and that just...escalated, slowly, over time, until we were about one step from sharing our morning showers just to save the hot water. So one evening I was sitting on the couch watching TV, and he plopped down next to me and stretched out, put his feet in my lap. I said "Jesus, Chief, at least be polite enough to let me have the end that doesn't smell like sneakers." So he laughed and turned around and curled up in my lap. We watched the game--at some point during which, Sandburg threw a pillow at the TV and knocked the plant off the top, traumatized the poor thing, still looks a little peaked--" Stephen smiled with him. "--and then when the game was over, I started to tell him to move so I could get up, and we'd kind of wrapped up...I guess like you and I used to do, home alone, watching TV." Jim smiled, for once without any trace of pain or regret, at the memory. "And I realized I didn't particularly want him to get up, I felt really good right where I was. In fact, I kind of felt like kissing him. So I did." 

Stephen smiled again. "What'd he do?" 

"Grinned and said 'All _right_!' and kissed me back. We ended up making out on the couch for a couple of hours. After that, it all just seemed kind of...settled. Neither of us really wanted anybody else, so we just...became...us." Jim shrugged. "And the sky didn't fall. I'll admit it was a little anticlimactic, but also pretty nice." 

"Sounds that way." 

"So...when I told him. We'd been talking about the usual stuff you have to talk about when you get into that, sexual history, what kind of protection you've been using or not using, whether you got bombed at some point and can't _remember_ what you used if anything, like that. How old we were when we lost our virginity came up. I said seventeen, he called me a late bloomer, and I said 'I wouldn't exactly say that, Chief.'" 

Stephen snorted a laugh. "What'd he say?" 

"I must have had a pretty weird look on my face, because he asked me if I was okay. I said something like uh, yeah, and basically fled into the kitchen. He chased me, of course. Took away the Coke I'd grabbed as an excuse to hide in the 'fridge, and said 'Jim, are you familiar with the term 'to hold out'?" 

Stephen laughed again. 

So I said 'Oh, hell,' not that I thought he was serious, he's as much a horndog at thirty as either of us were back when. But it did tell me how determined he was, and I knew he deserved the truth, because we were...I mean, it's one thing to keep personal secrets from friends. But this was..." 

"Was too important to who you are, and the way you..." 

"...to some degree, the way I'd be with him. Plus, you are, in sober fact, a former lover of mine, and I was seeing a lot of you by that time; so was he. If Blair and I were going to be a couple, I owed it to him to tell him that." 

"How long has he known?" 

"About nine or ten months." 

"Then you told him just a couple of months after we started talking again. Damn, he's been cool about it. I'd never have known he knew, he's totally relaxed with me." 

"Yeah. That's Blair. Anyway...it took...a while, to get the whole thing out. The whole lead-up to us...us making love, I couldn't exactly leave the rest of it out. I had to tell him about the game and everything, too." 

"Well, I can see that. It's a hell of an important part of your past, part of what made you who you are." 

"I didn't tell Caro because you and I were still...we weren't..." 

"We basically just _weren't_. I can understand that, too." 

"Plus Caro was a pretty private person as well. She'd a lot rather talk about her family's lives than anything that went on in _her_ head, and that was something we understood about each other. Ultimately, you can't go into a marriage with a don't ask-don't tell policy on both sides and expect it to work, of course..." 

"Of course. And you want it to work with Blair." 

"It's working with Blair with my efforts or without. Like I said, it's just...it just is. We just are." Jim took a sip of his drink, let the peach explosion die down some across his tongue, and continued. "When I told him...I don't remember my exact words...I think I blurted something like 'It was Stephen,' and he said something to the effect of 'Huh?' shaking his head a little like he thought he hadn't heard right, and I said 'You heard me, it was Stephen, my brother, the guy you noticed has the family resemblance, the guy we went to the game with last weekend, _Stephen_ , okay?' And I wilted then, and he sat down with me and got me kind of in his lap--don't laugh, it's not as hard as it sounds, I just don't sit directly on top of him; kind of across him--and he said 'I think you better start at the beginning here, Jim.' So that's what I did. I tried to start with the Cobra story being a load, but he stopped me and made me back up." 

"But you didn't fill in all the blanks at once." 

"I had holy hell just getting the bare bones of it out. He did ask me questions--he made _damn_ sure he understood whether or not the whole thing had been consensual, and whether either of us had ever been sexually abused by any adult, including Mom or Dad." 

"And when you said we hadn't?" 

"He just nodded and went on to some other point, I don't remember what. I do remember being pretty stunned at how matter-of-fact he was about it. It still blows me away, actually. He just keeps saying 'It's not that weird, Jim', like if he repeats it often enough, eventually I'll believe it." 

"You think it was weird," Stephen said, very softly, after a moment. 

Jim looked up. "Shit. Stephen. Not at the time, I didn't, no. When it was happening, it felt like the most natural... _perfect_ thing in the world, I swear." He reached over and covered Stephen's hand on the table with his own. "Hell, even after all this time, touching you still feels...right." 

Stephen turned his hand in Jim's and interlaced their fingers with a light squeeze. He whispered "Feels pretty right to me, too." 

They were quiet a moment. Stephen looked away finally and had another sip of his drink, but he didn't release Jim's hand. Jim resettled himself so that the position was comfortable, and thought a moment before continuing to speak. 

"I want you to know I...thought about you. Somehow, I managed to...well. During the first few years, I couldn't _not_ think about you. During the first few _months_ , I literally _dreamed_ about you. When I told you we shouldn't write each other? It wasn't only for the reason I said, though that was part of it. I _wanted_ to write you, and tell you everything I felt about you, tell you over and over again. I knew I couldn't keep from doing that if I wrote you at _all_ , and GOD forbid we should have put any of that in writing. We'd already been begging to be discovered, but that would likely have made it certain, especially since I was entering Special Ops, and even before then, there were a lot of occasions that our mail was routinely screened and censored, both coming in and going out. I knew...even if I managed to control _my_ self...you..." 

Stephen sighed. "Well, I hate to admit it, especially after what I said before about never hearing from you even on the occasions you'd told me I should expect to...but you were right about that. The words 'I love you' in a letter to one's brother might not be enough to flip any alarm signals, but I can guarantee you I wouldn't have stopped there. There would have been about eighteen pages of me going on about missing you day and night. Um...I actually did write letters like that. Waxed poetic like I haven't equaled since; those letters would likely _still_ swell your ego. And back then, other parts of you as well. I always burned the letters out behind the garage." 

"Jesus, Stephen. Even so, that was a hell of a risk." 

"I couldn't help it. I had to let the feelings out _some_ way, and there was no one I could tell. No one. Just like...the time I tried to..." 

Jim squeezed his hand, guilt rearing up in his chest again. 

Stephen whispered "I couldn't even risk telling my _shrink_ , or I didn't think I could. Not for my sake, for yours. Part of me wanted to hurt you, then--wanted to make you hurt so bad you'd feel it the rest of your life, just like I believed I would...but I couldn't bear the thought of ruining your life forever. And when I got over the worst, I was glad I hadn't risked it." 

"I am so. Fucking. Sorry, Stephen. I'll never be able to say that enough times." 

"There's _not_ enough times to make this...this tiny time capsule in the back of my mind, this miniscule part of me that will always live in that moment when I fell on my knees in my office and dropped the phone, when I really _realized_ , finally _believed_...sorry. Let's not go there right now. I asked you to give me your side of our time apart, let's try to stick to that." 

"Whatever you say, Stevie." Jim squeezed Stephen's hand again and sighed. "But one more thing--speaking of letters...you said you kept...that note. The one I left on the pillow on your bed. I kind of figured you'd have flushed it or something; it wasn't a total giveaway, but still a pretty intimate thing to say to your brother." 

"Oh, I kept it. I had one of those little wooden pillbox keychains..." 

"Oh, Jesus." Jim gulped, his head bowing. "Stevie..." 

"Had a mini of your senior portrait in there, too. Both of them were so worn and frayed after a few years I hardly dared take them out for fear they'd disintegrate. Ink was so faded on the note I could barely read it, not that I needed to see the ink to see the words. Well, apparently, in a drunken fit, after that call--I don't remember doing it--I threw the whole shebang off the balcony of the high-rise I was living in. The reason I know that's what happened is that Marah used her key when she heard me screaming and I wouldn't answer the door, and walked in as I was clinging to the railing out there, throwing _something_ with, she said, an outfielder snap that might have launched whatever it was into orbit. We figured it was my keys when, sometime the next day, she was going to take my car to run some errands for me, and practically resorted to prying up the floorboards, and still couldn't find them; fortunately she had spares of them all." 

"Stevie...oh, God." Jim put his drink down and leaned forward, sliding an arm around his brother's shoulders, pulling the slightly stiff form close to him and burying his own face in the younger man's shoulder. "I'm so sorry. So _sorry_..." 

Stephen let his own arms close around Jim's shoulders a moment, just waiting quietly. Finally Jim released him and sat back. "I know. Nothing I can do now can make up for what I did then, but _please_ believe that I loved you, Stevie. That I still do." 

"I believe you," Stephen said, quietly, neutrally. "So where were we?" 

Jim sighed and got up, taking a few aimless steps across the patio tiles. "Um...Blair not having a problem with you and me, I think. With our having been lovers, I mean...then the fact that I thought about you constantly at first." 

"As far as Blair goes, you're a lucky man, Jim," Stephen said softly. "Hang on to that guy. Okay...at first, you thought of me as much as I thought of you. Even though you never intended to see me or speak to me again?" 

"Maybe especially because of that. I'm not kidding, Stephen, I had to make that decision over again every single day for months. After that, it got a little easier--I only had to do it every couple of weeks or so, when I wasn't being kept busy to the point of exhaustion, and had time to start feeling lonely and missing you. Missing at least being able to _talk_ to you, _any_ thing...no romantic heroine ever mooned over anyone any harder than I did over you, believe me." 

"I believe you. So then, after the first few months, getting on for a year or so later..." 

"A year or so...by then it was...it was what I thought of as under control. I didn't have to think of you if I didn't want to, I wasn't obsessed any more. After all, I was young, and like I said, so busy I barely had time to think at all. There really is something to be said for the classic concept of joining the military to get over a lost love. You're just too tired and too bushwhacked by it all to have the strength to pine." 

"Wish I'd known that then. Might've joined up myself. Okay, go on. After that, the next few years." 

"I did still think of you sometimes. I don't know if you're going to believe this or not, but the memories of that last year are among the ones I always kept. You'd think that if I was going to start convincing myself that it was for the best never to see you and obviously it wasn't a big problem for you anyway, no harder than you'd tried to see me--and yeah, have the unadulterated gall to actually get _pissed_ about that, and about how you hadn't been considerate enough of me to be brave about my taking off--those memories ought to be some of the first to go. But they never did. Never. Not that I kept them in the forefront of my mind for frequent perusal or anything; when they did come up, I'd shake my head and dismiss them, fast. Like you said, water under the bridge. Except sometimes...usually when I was alone..." Jim sat back down and picked his drink up, holding the cold glass in both hands, staring into the darkened distance. "I did let them out to wander around my mind. Not only the sex. Other things--you smiling at me, the stunts we pulled off, the time we went ice tobogganing and flew off the track and wound up in a snowdrift, butts in the air, totally unhurt except for our pride, and how we laughed like idiots." He smiled a little. "And I'd wonder how you were, how your life was going...I'd actually think about calling you. But then I'd remember..." he sighed. "Those times were the only ones I lost a little of the pretense, couldn't kid myself quite so completely. I knew there was no way I could approach you after blowing you off the first time, then waiting so long. I mean, what the hell could I say?" 'Hi, Stevie, I know it's been eight years since I basically told you to fuck off, but I was just thinking of how much we used to mean to each other and I thought I'd say hi'?" 

Stephen gave a slow nod, staring down at his lap. 

"So I'd just tell myself I'd been right all along, it _was_ for the best that we not see each other, and I'd get back to business as usual." 

"Did you ever miss me? After...after the call?" 

Jim looked up. "Didn't I just say so?" 

"Not exactly, no." 

"Yeah, I missed you, Stevie," Jim murmured. "When you thought of me...was it _all_ anger?" 

"Are you asking if I missed _you_?" 

"Um. I guess, yeah." 

"Jim, there are times I _still_ miss you. Even when we're in the same _room_." 

Jim's brow furrowed, and he shook his head in bewilderment. 

"Yeah, we talk. We socialize, we even hug occasionally. But you never really came back to me, Jimmy. Not really." 

"I...thought you said you knew we wouldn't be lovers, after--" 

"I don't mean that, exactly. You _know_ what I mean." 

Jim stared at him a moment, then looked away. "I think I do. Yeah, I do. I can't explain it, though. Because it can't be that..." 

"...that we want to turn back the clock, no, that's not what I mean, either. Everything changes. You and I would have changed as we matured even if you'd stayed. I'm not sure how to describe it. I just...I just want you _back_. I don't know how else to say it, and I know it's no help to you without some explanation, but I don't have one." 

"It's okay, Stevie. I know what you mean--well, I know what you're trying to say. I don't understand what it is we want, exactly, either. Are you willing to try to find out with me?" 

Stephen thought, silent and still for a long moment. 

Then he drained his glass and set it down with an air of finality. "Yeah, Jimmy. I'm game if you are." He held his hand out to Jim. "In fact...I dare you. You sick fuck." 

Jim almost snorted daiquiri. He managed to swallow, and grinned, setting his glass down, reaching to take Stephen's hand. "You're on, Stevie. Christ, I love you." 

"Love you too, Jimmy." 

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In this series of stories, Jim and Stephen had a loving, consensual sexual relationship in their teens. 


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